The following was written by Godfrey staff:
Middletown CT (September 22, 2008) – Three basic sources for anyone researching the history, biography, or genealogy of Middlesex County, Connecticut, are now available in their entirety free to the public at the Godfrey Memorial Library’s website, www.godfrey.org. A $5,000 grant from the Middlesex County Community Foundation/Connecticut Humanities Council made digitization of these materials possible.
The three books are The History of Middlesex County, Connecticut, with Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men, published in 1884; The Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, published in 1903; and A Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, by David Dudley Field, originally published in 1819. These volumes, each more than a century old, are difficult to access in their hard copy format. Hard copies in Connecticut libraries are typically part of the reference collections and thus do not circulate. They are often too fragile to be photocopied.
Researchers living outside of Connecticut may have no access at all to hard copies. The digitization project funded by the Middlesex County Community Foundation has put on line more than 1,700 pages of material about the county, its towns, and its people.
Middlesex County Histories
David Dudley Field’s 1819 Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, includes all manner of intriguing information about events major and mundane, from murders to mining to the mysterious Moodus noises.The 1884 History of Middlesex County includes detailed histories of each of the 16 towns in the county, highlighting religious, military, and industrial heritage along with interesting tidbits about fixtures of local life such as taverns, newspapers, and schools. It includes biographies of more than 150 notable individuals, and portraits of more than 50 of them.
The 1903 Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County features biographies of more than a thousand men – and a few women – who were prominent at the turn of the twentieth century, along with their family lineages, and hundreds of portraits. The majority of the biographies are of individuals with roots that extended back to the colonial era, some of whose names are still part of the landscape today, such as Russell, Wilcox, Pelton, Lyman, and Gildersleeve. However, among them are included biographies of a number of recently arrived immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, with names like Dunn and Inglis and Kretzmer, who had prospered in their adopted homeland.
The three volumes can be accessed at the Godfrey Memorial Library’s web site, www.godfrey.org, by clicking on the “Search’ tab, then on “Mdlsx Co Hist,” which opens a page with links to the histories and background on the project.
The Godfrey Memorial Library is a privately supported, non-profit library of genealogy and local history located at 134 Newfield Street, Middletown, Connecticut.
The Middlesex County Community Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in Middlesex County. Its mission is to work with charitably-minded individuals and organizations to build permanent endowments and other charitable funds and to support local non-profit organizations through effective grantmaking to address community needs. Since its founding in 1997, the Community Foundation has provided over $850,000 in grants to more than 142 organizations for the arts; cultural and heritage programs’ educational activities’ environmental improvements; and for health and human services.
Courtesy of Diana McCain